Cyber Intelligence to Grow as an Industry

Cyber intelligence will grow as an industry as businesses look to counter high-level threats on the Internet, according to KPMG’s global leader for information protection.

Malcolm Marshall claims a number of security firms will soon start piecing together the Advanced Persistent Threat jigsaw (which he claims is a euphemism for state-sponsored attacks) for private clients. He added that the revelations by Edward Snowden about the surveillance tactics used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) will also spark debate on the future of the Internet.

“Snowden’s revelations have triggered a privacy debate which will continue to rage in 2014. Expect more disclosures, more calls for greater transparency over government actions, and more efforts by the Internet giants to persuade customers that their data is secure,” he said.

Marshall also questioned whether businesses in the UK appreciated how dependent they were becoming on the Internet. Online business currently contributes 8% of GDP in the UK and this is expected to grow to 12% by 2016.

He said: “Attacks on directory and routing services have grown in 2013, and we have seen denial of service attacks against banks and media sites often linked to international tensions elsewhere in the world. A major outage of a country’s internet service may be on the cards, but if not, we can expect numerous disruptive DDOS attacks against individual firms sometimes with extortion in mind.”